The RAI’s third annual progress report is being released ahead of its National Summit at Parliament House, which will bring together over 400 regional leaders. The report notes improvements in areas such as recruitment, NAPLAN results, post-school qualifications, and disaster resilience. However, setbacks were observed in school attainment, rental vacancies, and the proportion of highly skilled workers.
Despite some progress, none of the targets have yet reached or surpassed metropolitan benchmarks. “The gaps in health outcomes are particularly stark,” Ritchie said. “Australians in the cities are accessing Medicare services, 70% more than regional Australians. While the number of medical practitioners is growing faster in regional areas than metro, the difference in the number per 100,000 of population is still more than 100, and for allied health workers the difference is 150.
“In other critical areas, metro housing approvals were triple regional approvals. There is a 15-percentage point difference in school attainment rates and while NAPLAN results are improving, our regional kids need additional help at twice the rate of metro kids. Three years of annual data now shows us that incremental progress won’t get regional Australia to equity of outcomes without big ideas and interventions.”
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